Had everything gone to plan you would be looking at sunrise over Buttermere now. But then even the best laid plans can sometimes prove fruitless…

The unforgiving air was biting at 6am this morning as I started an hour and a half long journey to the north Lakes. It was dark, and the journey monotonous, but I’d done it before a year ago and I knew that the sun would rise in the right place to make for a good picture. The wide empty roads gave way to narrow lanes and a gradual incline, and there was but a mile to go when I crested the pass and looked down into the valley, my attention taken by stationery headlights in the middle distance. And then the beams from my own car picked out a stream flowing across the road, frozen as a sheet of ice and forcing an impasse between myself and the cruel elements. The other vehicle was turning back and with some trepidation, so did I.

So near, yet so far.

Once the sun was up I enjoyed the crisp weather and blue skies as I procrastinated the short day away, before deciding that I would head for Coniston to try for a sunset. I wasn’t alone in this thinking as two other photographers arrived just as the sun went down and we exchanged pleasantries in the dimming and freezing air. Almost an hour and a half later I had the shot I wanted and retreated to the car before I completely lost the feeling in my extremities, making the long journey home as night fell. The day ended as it had started, but I had a new landscape shot for my portfolio.